


No Longer Rose

by lehulei



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: AU, Bad Wolf Rose Tyler, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-18
Updated: 2014-02-23
Packaged: 2018-01-12 21:54:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1201963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lehulei/pseuds/lehulei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You'll keep on changing. And in forty years time, fifty, there'll be this woman - this strange woman walking through the marketplace on some planet a billion miles from Earth. She's not Rose Tyler. Not anymore. She's not even human..."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

**1.**

It started when they died.

It had been a little side trip that they'd taken on because someone had asked. Pick up a packet of hycant leaves from the only city on the planet that traded them and bring the leaves back. They had time, they figured, so they'd gone.

They hadn't been told they'd end up in the middle of a civil riot.

All she really could recall—even when she thought about it over and over for years to come, even when the memory started to fade and she cried when she couldn't recall every detail of his face, the smiles he threw at her or that sparkle in his eyes—all she could remember was the angry crackle of a blaster and the blinding painful flash of green that had engulfed them as they stepped out of the TARDIS.

When she come to, she found herself on the ground, arms spread wide and her limbs tingling. Taking the extra energy running through her as latent adrenaline, she pulled herself up and immediately set to making sure the Doctor was okay.

She found him a few feet away from the TARDIS, face down in the dirt. He wasn't breathing. Her knees collapsed, tears already blinding her though she struggled to keep them back.  _He_ _wasn_ _'_ _t_ _dead,_ _couldn_ _'_ _t_ _be_ _dead,_ _he_ _'_ _s_ _just_ _unconscious,_ she told herself, told the stabbing pain in her chest. Quickly, as her wispy delusion prepared to be completely blown away, she turned him over, took in his unseeing eyes and felt cracks spider across her soul.

Still hanging onto a thin thread of hope, she placed her hands over his chest, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the cold truth. The truth that confronted her a moment later. That single heartbeat that had been the monitor of her existence these past few years was gone.

She felt the dams break.

The sobs shook her body, taking the strength out of her and she fell across her lover's body, her head turned to the side, still desperate to learn that she was wrong. But there was no denying it. He'd told her he only had one life.

Anger swept through her and she lifted her head to beat against his chest. "You were supposed to spend your life with me!" she cried, each word emphasized with her fists. His face showed no reaction. The surge of futile anger left her and her hands fell one last time in defeat. "You weren't supposed to leave me," she whispered.

Head bowed, she stared at his face for a long moment, taking in the planes, the shadows and even those fine wrinkles that had started to appear. His eyes stared up at the sky, lifeless. Feeling as if her arm was made of granite, she brought her hand to his face, closing his eyes. And for the first time registered that something was different about herself.

Her hand was the color of milk chocolate. She stared at it in incomprehension. She found the same condition with her other hand as she brought it up to rub at her skin. The color wasn't coming off.

Incredulously, she brought those hands (that were not  _hers_ yet  _were_ ) up to her hair. It felt different. Grabbing a fistful, she brought it to her face. Black. Her hair was  _black_.

Though she knew, she  _knew_  it, she brought her hands up to her chest, one on each side. Tears fell as the undeniable fact crashed into her like a two-stone weight.

She had a double heartbeat.


	2. 2

**2.**

Long ago, a broken-hearted woman, had left an unnamed planet alone and numb with grief. She'd taken the ship she'd shared with the love of her life and thrown it into the Time Vortex, not caring where or when she was going. She'd spent hours, days, months— _she_ _didn_ _'_ _t_ _give_ _a_ _damn_ —hiding from the rest of the universe.

It wasn't until she'd finally heard the song of her TARDIS, the sweet melody wending its way through the wall of grief, that she finally felt a measure of solace in her hearts. She missed him too, this ship that was both new and old. The song resonated in the grief-stricken woman and she tentatively reached out to the ship and found the secret to her immortality.

The TARDIS was the reason Rose still existed. She'd forgotten the Bad Wolf. A young human girl had been turned into a goddess who'd held the whole of existence in the palm of her hand for a moment out of time. She'd destroyed a whole species and saved the greatest man in the universe. She couldn't have been "just human" after that. No, it seemed that there had been a bit of Time Lord left. And the TARDIS had made sure of that.

Though she had traveled with the Doctor, all three incarnations of him, she hadn't really known much about his people. It wasn't that he'd not wanted to tell her, but more that they had so much more to do and say, even more so when it had been just her and her Doctor, who only had the one life to live.

When they'd been grounded while they waited for their TARDIS to grow, he'd wanted to explore parallel Earth. Though Rose had lived there for several years herself, she hadn't actually gone further than the People's Republic and so had jumped at the chance to be traveling again, especially with him. Then the TARDIS had fully grown and they'd taken to the skies once more, having adventures that boggled the human mind. It had been the Doctor in the TARDIS with Rose Tyler, as it should be.

And now it was just the TARDIS and Rose—who wasn't Rose anymore.

Oh how her hearts ached, how her soul cried out for its missing half. The TARDIS understood and wept with her, shared her pain. The young ship had been trying to impart this to Rose in those dark days of grief and sorrow but Rose had been too wrapped up in counting the pieces of her hearts to be aware of it. The music had finally reached Rose as she lay on the jump seat of the console room. She wasn't sure what had changed that she was finally willing to listen, but she was and when she heard the melodic telepathic communication, the tears she hadn't wept since she last saw his body fell. And the TARDIS embraced her.

This connection she formed with the TARDIS was unlike anything she had ever experienced. It wasn't like having someone else in her mind but more that the awareness of herself and the universe around her had expanded exponentially. She'd thought in the past, when she'd come across the Doctor standing in a random room with a faraway look in his eyes, that he'd gotten lost in one of the many tangents his thoughts often tripped on. But now being able to speak with the TARDIS herself, experience the ebb and flow of time and space, coming close to infinity and zero all at once, she understood the look that had been on her love's face. It had been one of peace.

Rose knew she'd soothed his spirit, that she'd completed him, but the inner peace one got communing with the TARDIS was different. It engendered a oneness with the surrounding planets and civilizations, individual lives and overall societies, that Rose had only read about in books of spiritual philosophies and had never dreamed of experiencing in actuality.

She learned the history of the Time Lords, gained such an understanding of the workings and threads of Time that she finally comprehended what the Doctor had meant when he'd held her hand outside the Powell estate, in their first days together and told her,  _I_ _can_ _feel_ _it...the_ _turn_ _of_ _the_ _earth._ _The_ _ground_ _beneath_ _our_ _feet_ _is_ _spinning_ _at_ _a_ _thousand_ _miles_ _an_ _hour._ _The_ _entire_ _planet_ _is_ _hurtling_ _around_ _the_ _sun_ _at_ _sixty-_ _seven_ _thousand_ _miles_ _an_ _hour._ _And_ _I_ _can_ _feel_ _it._ _We're_ _falling_ _through_ _space,_ _you_ _and_ _me,_ _clinging_ _to_ _the_ _skin_ _of_ _this_ _tiny_ _little_ _world._

It was that multiplied by billions of stars and planes of existence.

She also saw now why the Doctor was always on the move. Yes, it was in part a motion of running away, of not facing the consequences, but a large part was because of this  _feeling_ , this  _love_  that one couldn't help but have for the universe at large once one had experienced the touch of stars dying and being born, of civilizations rising and falling, of a single life starting and ending.

She laid her hands on the console and looked up at the glowing center, letting the TARDIS' song trill through her mind and spirit.


	3. 3

She doesn't go by "Rose Tyler" anymore. That name has too much—is just too heavy for her to wear for the rest of her lives. It belongs to the pink and yellow girl she had been. She doesn't introduce herself as anything more than "a Wanderer", not even "a Traveler"—there is no destination in mind.

She wanders alone. Her family wouldn't know her in this form. The strangeness of her situation would create a barrier between them that could never be crossed, though they'd try to accept her and carry on as if she hadn't changed. But it would still be there; the fact that she isn't really "them" anymore. It's something that she doesn't feel up to experiencing. Maybe a hundred years from now she'd go back, but she couldn't now.

As time passed, the thought of taking on a companion, like her Doctor had, never takes hold in her mind. Letting someone else into her life, getting close to them and watching them leave her or die; she couldn't live through that, over and over. She wonders how her Doctor continued to go on. Maybe someday in her future she'll contemplate it further, but not now. She knows that she's pushing things away, knows that there are pauses she introducing into her existence, but just because the wound starts healing doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt.

For a long time, she'd stayed in the TARDIS, somewhere in space. She'd only landed when she'd run out of supplies or had to get something to repair the TARDIS. The old girl wasn't as old as her mother but she certainly didn't mind being pampered. The woman no longer known as Rose smiles at the thought. The ship had been her friend.

After years of aching loneliness, she could no longer ignore the pull of responsibility to the whole of reality. Being the last of her kind, the kind that had the ability to change the course of history should she choose, there was a burden that that laid on her narrow shoulders. Sensing the shift in the Wanderer's mind, the TARDIS had taken her where she was needed. A small space station on the outskirts of the Accion Nebula. Not too many people there, in their varying sizes and colors. Not a whole lot happening but there she'd gotten a small reminder of what it felt like to have a purpose.

There'd been a small girl who'd fallen through a carelessly open grate and had been hanging just below the opening, where one would need some rope or at least some ingenuity to get to her. She had been one of the first people to notice the situation and she'd taken charge. The girl had hugged her tight around her middle in thanks and gone skipping back to her mother, as happy as if she hadn't just been rescued from a 48-meter drop.

Children were resilient and it was that resiliency that had gotten the Wanderer to start thinking of continuing what she and her Doctor had started: exploring the known universe, trying to avoid trouble and failing—but most of all, helping people. That one incident had led to more, and the gaping hole in her chest started to fill back in with a sense of rightness and purpose.

She'd go looking for those in need. Sometimes, usually at the least expected, they'd find her. And other times, the TARDIS would take her to some random place and time, because someone was in need or simply because the ship thought the somber woman needed a vacation.

Thus she finds herself in a marketplace, teeming with humans and aliens alike, all hawking their wares in superb hyperbole to the patrons come to look and shop. She trails her fingers across a soft piece of fabric that a Kort is holding out for her inspection, greed shimmering behind his flattering smile. She shakes her head at him as she moves on.

She'd woken up from a rare nap to find herself out of the Vortex and landed on a trade planet with a bag of what passed for money and provisions next to her. She'd laughed at the TARDIS' obvious attempt to get her to take some time for herself. But after having had the week that she'd just managed to survive, she understood where the ship was coming from.

She remembers a time when being in the middle of a large shopping area would bring a sense of excitement to her. She doesn't feel more than amused now. Having lived for so long and seen so many things, something as mundane as buying trinkets "just because" holds less value for her.

Stopping underneath a ragged awning, she watches as two humanoids haggle over the price of a glittering necklace. She finds herself laughing quietly. One of the aliens has multiple arms and is using the haggling to distract the stall owner from the fact that one of its arms is divesting him of his other wares while he charges a ridiculous price for the necklace.

She stumbles forward as she's jostled from behind. Irritation runs through her and she turns to deliver a scathing glare at the clumsy fool, but her eyes lock onto something behind him before any word escapes and then it's impossible for her to speak because she can't breathe.

Sunlight gleams on red hair as the woman holds an overflowing cup of foam. She laughs with her companion whose sipping from a similar mug, getting foam over the top of his lip. His eyes nearly close with the force of his laughter as he uses the sleeve of his long brown coat to wipe his mouth. They set the mugs down and continue to move through the marketplace. The woman, Donna, veers off in a different direction while the Doctor ( _so young yet so old_ ) gets caught up talking to a vendor about a spiked Dresulian cooking ball.

The Wanderer's eyes follow him, drink in the sight of him as her hearts beat madly, every fiber of her being focused on the Time Lord who wasn't hers, yet _was_. The temptation to cross the line is irresistible and without thinking, she steps in his direction.


	4. 4

**4.**

He's moved on from the spiked ball and resumed strolling through the various stalls full of tasty fruit, pungent meats and silken cloths. His hands are in the pockets of that long brown coat, his trainers scuffing the dirt. His pace has no rush and she can see that this is one of those rare trips that was done just for fun.

Her steps had faltered when she'd neared him and screams of timelines and order rang through her mind. She had responsibilities now that she couldn't throw away. She could feel that it wasn't right, the possibilities and consequences tumbling through her mind. Would reality end if she spoke to him now? Would she never have _her_ Doctor if she did this? She couldn't risk it. And so she'd stayed a little behind, following him, feeling anguish and joy mixed up in one great swirling pool of chaos within her.

It's the most emotion she's felt in nearly sixty years. Her hearts lift at his easy grin, contract as a thoughtful look passes over his face while analyzing a clump of plants surreptitiously with his sonic screwdriver. She fights back a tender smile at his insatiable curiosity. He looks around behind him and his eyes pass over her as if she isn't there, as if she's of no consequence. Which she isn't. She's blinded momentarily by tears before she blinks them back.

There's something about his passing glance that catches some bit of her attention that she ignores, thinking that it'll just cause her more pain.

He's now speaking to the stall owner and, after an exchange of currency, he picks up a clump of the purple-leafed plant he'd been sonicking and drops it carefully into an inside pocket. He pats his jacket, satisfied, and looks up again behind him and around, confusion in his brow. She pretends that she's examining the bolt of cloth near her, ignoring the greedy voice of the cloth's vendor, while she watches him through the fall of her dark hair.

He heads back in the direction he came, towards her, a slightly concerned look on his face. Her hearts are hammering in her ears because _this_ is the moment, the chance she's been looking for. She knows it's a bit pathetic but she can't help but want at least a small touch, a little connection. She won't say anything to him, won't tell him who she is; she'll walk away but if the universe could just _please_ give her this, she'll be able to continue living. She repeats this to herself because it's not a guaranteed.

She shifts a bit to her right, letting her hand fall to her side as she walks in his direction. Her eyes focus on something behind him though all her attention is on him. There's less than a meter of space between them and then none and he's passed her, none the wiser of what just _could've_ occurred.

Because nothing had happened when he'd walked into her. She watches him in disbelief as he enters through a curtained doorway and finally pays attention to that niggling sense of _wrong_ that had been tapping at the edge of her consciousness. She stares at her hands and sees the intangible quality to them. She turns, seeing the double images of some stall vendors that scream out to her now as obvious, images of people who are there but aren't.

_Parallel universes, you bloody idiot, parallel universes_ , shouts that horrible little voice in her mind. She wants to hit herself and cry. She wants to tear down the stalls next to her and cause havoc and make them feel what she's feeling because it's terrible and consuming and so hard to hold in. Her fists clench and her mind has just formed the question to scream at the heavens— _Why?—_ when the malleable threads of time weave themselves into a Gordian knot that cannot be cut through with a simple sword.

" _Who was she?" his tone is deceptively casual, though a drumbeat has started up in his head, the tremors running to the tips of his fingers and the tops of his toes. It's a feeling of the inexorable and he suspects it but can't, won't, put a name to it._

" _I dunno," comes the frustrating answer from his confused friend._

There's an indescribable feeling of _power_ running pouring into her and it's familiar and alien all at once. It's been many, many years since she'd felt this way yet simultaneously, it was the first time. She hears the surprised tones and the frightened yells of the vendors around her, the ones in her world, and watches in a detached way as patrons and sellers alike scramble as fast as they can away from her.

Oh, please. Please. _He can't remember the last time he's prayed but if there was a God, Someone who was listening, he hoped they would answer now. "What did she look like?"_

_Donna's next words bring an odd sort of silence in his head, as if his hearts have stopped beating and the galaxies have stopped turning. "She was... blonde."_

It's a supernova and atomic explosion all at once. It's knowing nothing and everything; it's the past, the future, the present. It's having omnipotence and being at the beck and call of Time. And it's going to kill her if she doesn't obey.

She bursts into golden light, arms spread wide, head thrown back as the power of the Time Vortex once again _(as never before)_ works at the will of a young woman trying to save the man she loves.

_His hands are shaking and he has to clasp them together, a futile effort. Foreboding and anticipation, fear and longing come together inside of him where a pink and oh so human girl used to live. What happens next will define the rest of his life. "What was her name?"_

" _I don't know."_

_He fights back the urge to throw something in her direction. It isn't her fault but he_ must _know. He must know. He must know! A small degree of the franticness he is feeling leaks into his voice, making him rough and a little unkind. "Donna, what was her name?"_

_His tone doesn't phase her. She's too wrapped up in trying to snatch the tails of the elusive memory. "But she told me…to warn you. She said two words."_

_His blood stops cold. He's beginning to understand the maelstrom of emotions running through him, dancing across his hearts. "What two words, what were they, what did she say?"_

_She utters two words that have been seared into his mind long, long ago. "Bad Wolf."_

She watches as the Doctor's world changes, golden light flowing over signs, hanging banners and the TARDIS herself, changing the words, leaving a message for him.

Words ring through her mind and throughout all worlds and all times. "I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself. I take the words. I scatter them, in time and space."

_He bursts outside, his eyes frantic. Was she here? Had she somehow come into his world? His insides are burning with excitement and terror and he's the closest he's ever been to committing a knowing act of violence when he sees she's not there._

_And then the changes register on him. He runs up to a wall,_ Bad Wolf _written all over the posters. The signs have also been changed. Wide-eyed and panicking he almost misses her as she's standing there._

_Maybe it was the ethereal quality around her or the complete and utter sadness reflected in her dark eyes, but her gaze catches his attention for just a moment and there's a touch of_ recognition _in his mind before she turns and disappears into thin air._

"I can see everything…all that is…all that was…all that ever could be."


End file.
